5 Christmas Day cooking disasters that will make you squirm

Cooking a roast turkey for the whole family on Christmas Day is stressful enough, without something going terribly wrong in the kitchen.

Unfortunately, no matter how much planning and organisation you put into a special meal, faulty kitchen appliances, a lapse in concentration and well-meaning but distracting family members can get in the way.

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Whether they make you laugh, feel reassured or have added pressure to the whole Christmas cooking situation, here are five stories that are bound to make you weep, laugh and cringe at the same time.

Very clean potatoes

'My mum was preparing Christmas dinner and everything was going well. She was quite stressed, as you tend to be when organising Christmas. She went to give the recently peeled potatoes a wash and then instead of reaching for the oil, reached for the washing up liquid and poured it all over them...

'We promised they'd be fine and cooked them anyway... but they did taste a bit odd.'

Siobhan, London

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Toxic fumes

'I found what I thought was a silicone heart-shaped tray to make stuffing with. I put the stuffing in the tray and popped it in the oven. However, it was actually an ice-cube tray...

'The rubber from the tray melted and dripped onto the roasties, parsnips, turkey, pigs in blankets and all over the metal cooker racks. There was rubber smoke everywhere and because it was rubber, and toxic, we had to bin everything in the oven.

'For dinner, we had ham, sprouts, peas, carrots, breadsticks, hummus and a box of celebrations.'

Kerryanne, Lincolnshire.

An oven malfunction

'Mum was cooking Christmas dinner for six of us, around 10 years ago, when the oven broke mid-way through. So we carted everything onto baking trays and drove the half-cooked food 20 minutes away to my uncle's to finish it, all while trying to keep it warm.

'We were still finding roast potatoes under the seats of the car for months later.'

Ami, London

A dog, car journey and... vomit

'As a professional chef, I had cooked an entire Volvo's boot worth of luxury food for a client to drive up to his parents in Yorkshire. Each item for each meal for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day had been cooked, cooled and packaged then I'd written a neat little label and the whole process took the best part of three days. Three temperature zones were required (frozen, fridge temp and room temperature). It was a nightmare.

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'At the last moment, the dog sitter decided she couldn't look after the puppy over Christmas so my client took a four-month-old Cockapoo up to Yorkshire, too. The driver stopped at a service station and, first, the puppy was taken for a walk, so he could have a pee, then the driver nipped into the main building to go to the loo. The puppy was left in the back seat of the car for five minutes.

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'Clearly the smells coming from the boot where too tempting so he ate though the seat, ripped open multiple food packets, then polished off half a baked ham. This act of theft wasn't discovered until the whole party were back on the motorway heading north. Charlie somehow managed get his front legs up on to the back of the driver's seat, and was then violently sick down the driver's neck.'

Rachel, Salisbury

A kitchen filled with thick, black smoke

'Last year, I got a new fan oven so I packed it with foil to protect it. The turkey was the size of a young elephant and my husband had to help me because I couldn't even lift it – he had to use his foot to push it in.

'I went upstairs to have a shower and finish laying the table and when I came back downstairs my heart stopped. The kitchen was full of black smoke which was coming out of the oven and all the units. The foil had covered the fan at the back of the oven.

'I turned the oven off and was then sat on the kitchen floor to try and pulled the bird out.